Lament for Winter at the Beginning of Spring (after Merton)

~Elisabeth Wenger We’ve waited for this so long, ever since fall, that when we still expect to slog through winter the sun comes out and surprises us with spring breezes, that we, startled, think of boundless grace and hope it’s not yet the end of the world. Discontent sets in and the coldness of monkish cells ripens without wind. We fail. No longer in service to the icy wind old lacy leaves, worm-eaten in trees fall, leaving behind cracked branches, beating their discontent against each other, after being frozen in place all winter, a monastic restraint, a smallness of grace that grows curly tendrils in the warmth of spring. After Lenten fasts, the engorged spring rips down the side of the mountain like wind. A damn could not hold it back, even one of grace, And we find it easy to forget the prayers of ice, falling apart, loosely growing on the ground, the stakes we used in winter to comfort our failing hearts pulled out. The hole of discontent, a room we prayed in all winter, filled up with too much, discontent driven out. License is given; go walking in the soft air of spring, and bring back for us bird feathers, dropped at the end of winter when new wings were caressed by the concupiscent wind. Enjoy the paths under umbrageous trees that scatter green shadows. Fall in the new mud, relish and wallow. You will come clean in a shower of grace. But for us the heady cup overflowing, a superfluity of grace brings nothing but a restlessness, unquiet discontent. We preferred the meditation of always falling into depression, and forcing ourselves out with promises of spring. Bracing our limbs for the few steps between cell and chapel, killing wind against our chanting chests made us strong to accept winter. The bones of landscapes half-alien we made our own, geography of winter in the fields and soul, now hidden with the burgeoning of grace, made pregnant with a quivering, with a warm hovering, a holy wind over water, so recently the ice we froze our unholy thoughts in. Discontented with this arrangement—It is too soon! We are not yet ready for a swelling spring!— we shuffle in the garden, afraid we will discover the world’s edges and fall. Now is the winter of our discontent: The boundless grace of this warm spring that winds around our limbs, the serpent of the fall.